[OpenWrt-Devel] Migration in ath79 for swapped ethernet

[Peter Geis]

On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 4:00 PM Piotr Dymacz <pepe2k at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Peter,
>
> On 27.01.2020 19:57, Peter Geis wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 1:35 PM Adrian Schmutzler
> > <mail at adrianschmutzler.de> wrote:
> >>
> >> Just a quick one:
> >>
> >> > > So, no matter what we do, there is no easy way forward.
> >> >
> >> > We could remove all ar71xx -> ath79 migration helper scripts, ar71xx
> >> > board names from supported devices lists in ath79 images and make the
> >> > target a brand new, without any concerns about soon-to-be obsolete ar71xx ;)
> >>
> >> At the moment, I'm actually mostly inclined towards this solution.
> >>
> >> However, for me personally SUPPORTED_DEVICES was always more a "don't brick entirely" flag, so I never expected it to ensure 100 % config compatibility. More like preventing me from flashing ubnt,unifi image onto tplink,wdr-4300-v1. This impression might have been wrong, though.
> >>
> >> But as mentioned by Ansuel, there are other incompatible switches to come (and some are already waiting), and unless we want to create new targets or rename devices in these cases, we have to think about different "levels" of compatibility anyway beyond ar71xx->ath79.
> >
> > Wouldn't it be reasonable to put up a warning that migrating from
> > ar71xx->ath79 will require a reset of networking configuration?
> > Then all you need to do is detect when that sort of upgrade is
> > occurring and nuke the requisite files.
>
> I believe we already have such a 'warning' on the Wiki: [0]. The exact
> problem is 'detecting that sort of upgrade' (what about user migrating
> device under 19.07 but between ar71xx -> ath79 and then back to ar71xx?).
> Also, the problem doesn't affect all the devices so the users have to
> first check whether the device they migrate/upgrade has to be
> (sys)upgraded without preserved settings or not.
>
> > Also I don't know bout y'all, but I usually take a major revision
> > upgrade as an opportunity to hard reset and rebuild anyways. (Years of
> > ingrained ddwrt habits)
>
> But it's not a general rule and, at least in case of generic/basic
> settings, user shouldn't be worried about upgrading between major
> versions with preserving settings. Otherwise, the whole idea doesn't
> make much sense and we should just prevent settings backup during major
> versions switch.

Excellent point!
Here's an odd possibility, just to throw at the wall.
What about building a special transition image, specifically for
moving from ar71xx to ath79.
If you want to retain the ability to return to ar71xx have an image to
go the opposite way.

Or a metadata package to do the conversion post flash.

Because the option (which seems pretty drastic, unless the size could
be minimized) of having a near permanent conversion script built into
the firmware seems rather costly.

>
> [0]
> https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/ar71xx.to.ath79#upgrade_from_ar71xx_to_ath79
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Piotr
>
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